Besançon: A Tale Of Three Ex-Colleagues

I pressed the button next to the entrance of the building where Eiat was staying. There came the familiar voice, "Come in. We're on the second floor, on the left side." After a second, the door was automatically unlocked. I pushed it, entered the building and walked up the stairs instead of taking the lift.

Eiat was welcoming me with I-Chen. I opened my arms big and almost jumped on them. It had been years that we had not gathered. Actually I had not informed them about my trip to France. But Ernest had excitedly announced my visit to Jui-Chu, who told I-Chen. Finally the news also reached Eiat.

"I was so surprised when I-Chen telephoned me, telling me that you were in France. Recently I saw you were online on yahoo messenger but you never mentioned anything."
Eiat was preparing tea to accompany cookies and chocolates that I-Chen and I had brought.

"Since I was going to stay in the Haute-Saône, I was not sure to have many occasions to come to Besançon. That's why I decided to keep quiet. Otherwise if I were not able meet you at all, that would disappoint you even more."

From Eiat's young and svelte look, you would not believe she was already a mother of three! I-Chen still kept her hair short and clothing neutral. According to them, I had the most obvious physical change, yes, after the loss of at least 10kg's fat! I-Chen had heard from Jui-Chu's description that I had become more ladylike. When she saw me in person with my facial expressions and hand movements, she realized her Malaysian friend still gesticulated as much as six years ago.

We used to be the Hua family's employees in the Phenix restaurant. As we were not encouraged to chat during our working hours, I often patiently waited for my two colleagues, who finished their duties fifteen minutes later than I, to come out from the side entrance. Because of my initiative, we became more than just colleagues. In terms of language, I felt close to the Taiwanese I-Chen who spoke Mandarin while in terms of culture, I could also share a lot of topics with the Thai Eiat since we were both from the neighbouring countries.

We had a short but nice tea time before fixing another date for the restaurant. As I had another occasion to spend two nights in Eiat's apartment, we invited I-Chen for a home-cooked dinner. During the preparation, Eiat offered us cool raspberry beer to go with some snacks. Eiat prepared a mixture of grated carrots (to replace papayas which could hardly be found in Besançon and were very expensive), French beans, ground peanuts, belacan, lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, etc. I served fried vegetable, chicken as main dishes. and my bottle of cider was opened to go with the meal. To end the evening, we had apple crumble for dessert.

The next evening, we wished to spend time both in a restaurant and a pub with the same budget. So we opted for simple Kebab set dinners in the Populaire Turkish restaurant

and then we took drinks in the Savana cafe.

Each one of us ordered two alcoholic drinks: I-Chen took a beer, then a Martini, Eiat and I ordered were faithful to the Martinis. But we tried both red and white ones. It was the first time we three had a gathering in a bar. We really enjoyed the nice moment together, putting aside our worries.

I look forward to our next ladies' night. Don't you, my friends?